New kid on the PNM block, attorney Justin Phelps, said in democracies everywhere in the world it is known that whistleblower information is always set up so as to hide the identity of the whistleblower. Phelps made the disclosure at a PNM political meeting in the Croisee in San Juan on Thursday night. It was his second appearance on a PNM platform. “Whistleblower legislation provides for the protection of the identity of the whistleblower,” he explained.
Therefore, the inconsistencies in the e-mails allegedly written between key government officials which Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley read out in Parliament did not mean they were not true, Phelps said. He said the United Nations Convention on Corruption had stated that whistleblowers were not to be investigated. An independent investigation into the authenticity of the e-mails was needed to protect the whistleblower, he said. “Himself cannot investigate himself,” he said.
Phelps said the Government, instead of giving an answer to the e-mails, focused on Rowley’s conduct. Defending the PNM’s walking out of Parliament just before the conclusion of the debate on its no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Thursday, Phelps said it was a Westminster political tradition. “The ancient tradition in the Westminster model is that you subject yourself to the debate and if you object, the way to do it is to walk out.”
A battery of PNM officials, including deputy political leader Marlene McDonald, Senators Terrence Deyalsingh, Faris Al-Rawi and Fitzgerald Hinds, chairman Franklin Khan, chairman of the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation Nafeesa Mohammed and Point Fortin/La Brea MP Paula Gopee-Scoon were on the platform to lend support to Rowley at the Croisee meeting. “We are here to tell our political leader we are in support of his standing up in defence of democracy,” Mohammed shouted.
McDonald said the e-mails represented an orchestrated attempt to undermine the key tenets of the democracy—the judiciary and the media. Quoting an ANSA McAL poll, she said the PM and her Government’s popularity had suffered a nosedive. “If I were she I would be concerned about the poll (rather than the e-mails),” Mc Donald said.
“The chickens have come home to roost and there are now foxes in the henhouse. “But as the Man above says, joy cometh in the morning,” she said.